It took a little over two hours starting from nothing. Developed it in Safari 4.0 and works great with that browser. Haven't yet tested it in Firefox 3.5, which claims HTML 5 audio/video media support as well. (UPDATE: Firefox doesn't support the MP3 format. You're stuck with Ogg or WAV.) It "works" in Mobile Safari on my iPhone 3G, but it's not pretty: the audio element is visible and the MP3 launches a Quicktime player.

Think what you want about the iPad and Apple's non-support of Adobe Flash. If you're a web developer and not excited about creating rich media experiences with HTML, Javascript and CSS, you just might be a dried-out husk.

Feel free to hack this code. You can send screenshots (links only, please!) and bug reports to me here.